Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

I got a new planner in August, and I’ve really loved using it the past several months. I’ve always used a calendar and I’m a pretty naturally organized person. Meal planning, appointment tracking, to-do lists… that’s practically one of my love languages. A few years ago, we had a large family calendar hanging in the kitchen, but when we moved into the new house I didn’t really have a good space for one. So I attempted to make a family binder (using ideas from Pinterest) with a calendar section and otherwise go digital, storing everything in my phone calendar – and it was a miserable failure!

I was forgetting things I needed to do and running late for appointments. Apparently, writing things down really cements them in my brain. On any given day, I can usually close my eyes and visualize a monthly calendar and tell you which days I have something scheduled – IF I’ve written it down. So around the time school started, I was on the hunt for a paper calendar again, but I wanted something portable. Something pretty enough to spread out on the kitchen counter, but small enough to tuck in my purse and take with me to appointments (which really helps with scheduling a follow-up, let me tell you!)

I chose an Erin Condren Life Planner – there are entire blogs, fan clubs on Facebook, and hashtags on Insta devoted to EC. When I first started looking for a paper planner to buy, it was a little off-putting actually. Folks are hardcore about their #ECLP! It is wild. (Full disclosure: if you use that link, you’ll have a chance to sign up for a $10 off your first purchase coupon, and if you make a purchase, I’ll get a small referral credit as well.)

There is a monthly spread with tabs, followed by weekly spreads – mine is the horizontal option. EC also makes a vertical layout and an hourly layout, as well as a simple monthly calendar with notebook pages if you don’t need daily planning space.

If you start looking into them, you’ll see that a ton of women combine their love of scrapbooking or journaling with their love for this coil-bound calendar. It’s awfully pretty, but that style wouldn’t work for me. I have bought stickers (because I’m telling you, there’s like a cultofcondren and anything you normally plan around in your life? There’s a sticker for that! It’s easy to get etsy’ed away!) but I don’t cover every square inch of my planner in stickers, washi tape, and whatnot.

This week has been a bummer for a #planneraddict, though. Nearly everything I wrote down got cancelled or rescheduled! Ah, snow… so pretty and so problematic.

School has been out for two days and I highly suspect it will be out tomorrow, too. I was planning to take Jonas to his first concert on Friday – Lecrae at SKyPAC in Bowling Green! – but the venue has rescheduled the event. We’re hoping we’ll still be able to see Jonas play basketball and that celebrate the birthday and graduation of a couple of dear friends, but this is the South. If we get as much snow as the top end of the predictions suggest, we may be hibernating until June!

“When we drive to At-a-lanta on Saturday, are we going to see that police again? Remembah last time we went to Georgia we see’d a police?”

“Well, we will probably see at least one police car because it’s a long drive. But it probably won’t be the same police officer we saw last time.”

“Yeah, but when we see’d the police the last time I was SO scared and I thought, ‘Oh no, oh no, are we gonna go to jail?’”

“You don’t have to be scared, baby. I will drive us safely and follow the rules. We won’t go to jail. You know, it’s the job of police officers to help keep everyone safe.”

“But dey don’t!”

“What do you mean they don’t?” (Now, I was thinking, I know of several instances where police officers have failed at their sworn duty to keep everyone safe, but I didn’t think she did.)

“Remembah when that girl, that poor girl was so sad, and she had long hair and that police was hurting her on the ground? And she was cryin for her mama. She wasn’t keeping safe.”

*****

And so my heart broke a little. But, at the same time, there was a glimmer of rightness in having this conversation with my baby. Because she was watching and she was listening that day the McKinney, Texas pool party video went viral. She heard that young girl’s cries, and my outrage and my sadness about the whole incident.

See, I believe that white moms need to have The Talk –not the birds & the bees talk, the police talk– with their white children, too. For far too long, black and brown parents have had the conversation with their children while, in ignorance and bliss, white parents sat in privilege and just… never even thought about it. But that has to end. It ends for Mike Brown. It ends for Tamir Rice. It ends for Sandra Bland. It ends for John Crawford.

Here’s the really important thing, though. If you’re one of my white friends, and you’re reading this and thinking about this subject, please don’t just listen to me. You need to listen to Black voices. It’s not my place to speak for the people who are really on the recieving end of the trauma and terror of police violence. You need to tune in and listen: listen online, via Facebook and Twitter and great blogs and websites, listen in person. And then you need to have this conversation with your kids, too.

*****

So Abi and I talked a little more, in the car on our way home, about how most police officers are wonderful, conscientious, courageous men and women. It’s always important to be respectful and polite when we speak to them. But sometimes, even police officers make mistakes or even do things out of anger. Sometimes, like in the video she remembered, one might even hurt someone just because of what they look like.

I admit, I felt really inadequate to the task and I worried how much she was ready for. But like every important parenting conversation – it’s not a one and done deal. We’ll revisit this, again and again. I have the chance to get it right. I’ll go over it with her siblings.

And I hope you will, too. (In fact: if you’ve already started having The Talk with your kids, I’d love to hear what you said at various ages. Please drop me a note! Comments go to moderation, so if you’d rather yours stay private please just say so and it won’t be published publicly.)

Our first snowfall of 2016 wasn’t too much. About two inches, but there was some freezing underneath. We woke up Sunday morning to news of churches cancelling services (including ours) and plenty of accidents all around the tri-state area.

Normally, we would have just enjoyed a morning of hibernation. But we had planned Susannah’s birthday party for that afternoon at the ice rink, so we were concerned that it would be closed due to the road conditions. Or – even if the rink was open – that her friends’ families would stay away for concern over the roads.

Luckily for sweet Susannah, The Edge was open for business… and almost all of her classmates were able to come and celebrate our girl! It was a nice party, and it was interesting to watch my kids’ personalities play out on the ice.

Susannah was determined to spend every last second on the ice, and she wasn’t worried about ditching the milk-crate support. Being out there, gliding around, was more important to her than whether she needed ‘training wheels’ or not. Her pals from school tended to interact and skate together, “race” across the center of the ice, and zoom around to help each other up when they tumbled –but Susannah sort of floated in and out of those interactions and was just as happy skating solo. And that’s always been her way. She charts her own course, and while she’s very sociable and loves the people who cross her path, it truly doesn’t bother her if she’s on a different map and headed for a different destination.

Abigail went out fearlessly with her crate and didn’t want me to help much. After the first half hour, she even started skating without the box support! She has incredible balance and moves with more confidence and grace than I had at four. 🙂 Abi didn’t want the bigger kids or the rink workers to help her when she fell down. It was either me, or on her own; she didn’t really want strangers in her space. And that’s Abi’s way. She has physical grace and she really trusts her body, but she doesn’t much trust other people beyond a very tightly defined circle of family and besties. When she’s hurt or upset, it’s still an Only Mom Will Do deal.

Jonas was a little bit nervous when he first stepped out, but as soon as he got his ice legs under him, he had a blast. He really hit it off with Susannah’s friend J, and spent most of the time with him – they would race, challenge each other to try new things, help each other up when they both decided to abandon crates. He giggled and grinned and lit up the rink with his happiness. And that’s my big guy; he approaches new things with caution, but when he warms up –and especially, when he warms up to a buddy– he can tackle anything, and he does it with joy.

And as it turns out, when we got home from the skating party, we got our chance to hibernate. The schools decided to make Monday a snow day!

When I was a kid, I wasn’t particularly fearful. I don’t remember being afraid of the dark, or of monsters under my bed. I was too rational and logical, even at three or four years old, to get caught up in those fears.

I’m not sure exactly when that started to change. It wasn’t that I ever really got swept up in normal kid fears; it was more like I had a really heightened sense of awareness of everything that could go wrong in the world. The first pivotal moment came when my dad went to the Persian Gulf for Operation Desert Storm. My mother and brother and I remained in our house on Fort Hood, in central Texas, for a while. Then after a few months, we took a Greyhound bus all the way to Thomasville, Georgia. If you’re not familiar with the Southeastern United States, let me illustrate (well, let Google Maps illustrate):

That is a long stinkin’ bus ride. Please note that the 14 hours drive time helpfully listed on this map? Does not account for bus stops. Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes, pivotal moments in Fear.

There was this man on one of the busses. I was turned around in my seat, kneeling and looking around the bus. It was such a new experience, you know? Everything seemed infinitely possible. Who were all these people? Where were they all going? And then this guy made eye contact with me. My memory of him is hazy; over time I’ve turned him into that guy from Con-Air. At the time, of course, I had never seen Con-Air. But that guy scared me, like down to my bones scared me. My stomach clenched and I just knew I couldn’t explain it to my mom, who was seated across the aisle. She was sharing a seat with Jason, who was feeling horribly bus-sick most of the ride.

It was all fine, you know, as most bogeyman stories are. The guy didn’t grab me or try to kidnap me. We stopped eventually and found Dramamine for Jason. I remember the bus stopping at a Popeye’s chicken. I remember watching the trees change. That’s the thing about a trip from Texas to Georgia – the trees change and when you finally start seeing the pecans, you know you’re almost home.

We got to the bus station, and my Grandmama was there to pick us up, and we went to her house and I felt warm and safe. Even though I know now it’s not true, at the time it felt like the only place I would ever be completely safe again was at her house.

Eventually, the war ended and my dad came home (safe and sound and in one piece, thank God). We went back to our house on Ft. Hood. Everything went back to normal.

Except me.

So now I have to tell you what I know now, that I didn’t know then, to make the rest of this bogeyman story make any sense.

I have an anxiety disorder. My brain is long on ephinephrine and short on serotonin and dopamine. (It’s not actually that simple, and researchers don’t even agree that all anxiety disorders are due to chemical imbalances anyway. But that’s probably an argument for a scholarly blog. I’m just tellin’ my story.) And at age 34, I finally decided to address it with a medical doctor and treat it with medication. But back then, I thought I was just a really crazy kid.

When we got home, I was jumpier. It was like I suddenly had a Spidey-sense, and it tingled all.the.damn.time. Lots of situations started screaming “danger! danger! danger!”

There was a day – I don’t know what year, but it was while we still lived in Texas, so somewhere during 6th or 7th grade – when my parents wanted to take me and my brother to play Putt-Putt Golf. They were going to drop us off with a couple of pre-paid rounds of mini-golf and a pocket full of tokens for the arcade – then go enjoy themselves at the mall a half-mile down the road – then return to Putt-Putt where we’d all share a nice pizza for lunch. Swell plan. Super sweet. (As a parent, I look back on this day and feel terrrrrrible, because I am pretty sure I can guess how much my mother was looking forward to alone time and adult conversation with my father.)

We pulled in to the parking lot at Putt-Putt, and my brother hopped happily out of the van. I got to the doorway and just… froze. My knees locked, my hands started to shake. I felt feverish and my head was pounding. I was seized by a immediate and inescapable certainty that if I got out of that van and my parents drove off to the mall, I would never see them again. Something horrible would happen to us, or to them, while we were apart.

What I know now, that I didn’t know then, was that I was having my first panic attack.

What I know now, that I didn’t know then, is that there are a few good ways to help a person through a panic attack – but yelling at them to stop being dramatic and just get out of the darn van – isn’t one of them. (No blame to my folks here, okay? I’m sure that on the outside it looked like a stubborn preteen being dramatic and ruining the nice family day that had been so lovingly planned. They had no idea what was going on in my head because I had no idea how to explain it to them.)

Eventually, I think we just went home. I don’t really remember. My memory of the panic and standing in the doorway of the van is crystal clear, and then as the attack passed everything that followed is a blur. (I know now that that’s pretty common for me. I think it’s because all my senses are so heightened during the adrenaline rush of a panic attack; afterwards I am exhausted as if I had run a foot race. I usually zone out or even sleep pretty hard afterward.)

For the next few years, I suffered from mild agoraphobia. I had a very hard time being in crowds, no matter who was with me. I had crippling fears and anxieties about doing anything in public alone. And I knew that it wasn’t normal.

So I remember trying really hard to couch my fears in words that sounded normal. I decided it would be better to sound stubborn (“Because I just don’t want to go, all right?!”) than to sound crazy (“Because if I go, I’ll be kidnapped and tortured or possibly have a heart attack, I can just feel it coming”).

And I started researching what was wrong with me. I actually did a research paper in 8th grade on phobias; I found my notes recently and they made me cry. I knew it, even back then, even before anyone around me seemed to.

Over my high school and college years, I learned a lot of coping techniques that worked really well for me. I still had some quirks and idiosyncracies (for example: even though I learned to be comfortable shopping alone, I never ate in public alone nor attended a movie alone; and making phone calls to strangers made me feel sick to my stomach) but I was able to function at my schools and in my groups of friends. I went to amusement parks and baseball games, and learned how to talk myself down when the crowd levels made me itchy.

Let’s skip ahead a bit.

Last year, my anxiety level started to get worse. During normal, every day activities, I would feel like there was a movie trailer playing in my mind.

IN A WORLD….

WHERE EVERYTHING SEEMED NORMAL…

ONE WOMAN IS ABOUT TO DRIVE OFF THE ROAD AND DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH!

IN A WORLD….

WHERE DINNER NEEDS TO BE SERVED SOON…

THAT POT IS GOING TO BOIL OVER, SCARRING YOU FOR LIFE!

It was a pain in the you-know-what. Now, it’s not like I was hallucinating. I knew that the horrible, scary, worst-case-scenarios weren’t actually happening. I wasn’t out of my mind – I was too much in my mind. Does that make any sense? And so, I decided to get some help.

I’ve been in therapy a few times over the years for this and that, and one of my therapists in particular had sort of stumbled upon some of my anxiety triggers (while I was seeing her about something else completely) and was very helpful.

But this time, I decided that therapy wasn’t the way to go. I’ve talked about (and researched, and read about) my anxieties for many years, and you know what? It’s not something I can just pray my way through, or logic myself out of. I saw my primary care provider, and I started a prescrition anti-anxiety medication.

After about three days of the medicine, I was standing at the kitchen counter jotting down a to-do list. And suddenly, I realized, it was mighty quiet.

You know how, when the power goes out at night, there’s that dramatic zap as all the lights go off? But, if the power goes out in the daytime, you don’t notice immediately. After a few minutes, it slowly dawns on you… the air conditioner isn’t humming. The sound of the fridge that usually fades into the background is roaring in it’s absence. You think, “gosh, it’s quiet around here,” and then you notice the clock on the oven is dark, and it hits you: oh, the power went out.

That’s what it felt like… in my head.

I’ve been on my anxiety medication for about four months, and it’s been a great experience. I haven’t had any side effects, and my personality hasn’t changed. I’m not dulled or zombie-fied. I’m ME. And a lot of those quirks and things I thought were just parts of my personality? Turns out they were parts of my disorder. They were barnacles, and my medicine keeps them scraped off my hull.

Being able to tackle writing my book — is due in part to shedding my anxiety.

Having much more control over my temper — is due in large part to managing my anxiety.

Being able to come back here after a bad experience — also due to freedom from anxiety.

I’m not sharing this because I think every person on the planet should take drugs. I’m not sharing it so people will feel sorry for me. (Don’t, seriously; I’m good, I promise!) I’m sharing it because it’s been a heck of a ride, from 1990 till now. I’m sharing it because maybe you have a preteen kid who’s suddenly freaking out – so here’s just another possibility instead of assuming they are just being stubborn. I’m sharing it because maybe you have a friend with weird quirks and a list of things they just can’t bring themselves to do. Or maybe you, yourself, have some bogeymen under your bed.

It’s okay. You’re not alone. There are a lot of ways to fight your battles.

I promised to get back into blogging this year, so how about a quick recap?

Abigail is four years old. She attends Parents’ Day Out at our church two mornings a week and dance (combination ballet & tap) class on Friday mornings. We started the school year doing preschool at home but – full honesty – I haven’t pushed her with academics nearly as much as I did her brother and sister. What can I say? Chris swears she’s the last baby and it just all feels so different with her. She got glasses a few months ago, and our eye doctor diagnosed her with amblyopia – so she has to wear an eye patch a few hours each day to correct it. She’s in speech therapy for help with those adorable lispy mistakes she makes; I’m so proud of her progress but it’s always a little bittersweet when a kid leaves behind those babyisms and starts talking like a grown-up. She’s funny and tender and still a kid who’s smiley 99% of the time.

Susannah will be turning seven in a few days. She’s rocking the first grade at her Montessori school. She has lost a whole bunch of teeth – I have lost count and I didn’t write down every time she lost one. This seems like something a mom should keep track of. – and she always pulls them out by herself. She joined the Girl Scouts this year and is a Daisy in her school troop. (She’s selling cookies this week, if you need a Thin Mint fix. Just call me!) At church, she portrayed Mary in the Christmas pageant and she loves singing in the choir.

Jonas is nine (turning ten in February) and in fifth grade. He’s tall (Dad’s genes) and wears glasses (Mom’s genes) and such a smart young guy. He’s playing basketball this winter and played soccer in the fall. He’s also gotten a little more aware of Internet privacy, so sometimes he asks me not to put things on Facebook – I have a feeling that will extend to the blog, too.

Chris is happily practicing general surgery and really enjoys working with his partners. In addition to his dream car – the Mustang he bought in 2014 – in 2015, he got his dream truck! It’s a Ford F-150 something-or-other with a bunch of souped-up features that make him very happy (and that I don’t ever remember!)

And I’m making some changes. I’ve retired as a La Leche League Leader; even though I enjoy working with moms and babies, it had become difficult to continue doing volunteer work without much support. Plus, I need to make some margin in my time to add new things… like writing a book.

I’ve wanted to write a novel for my entire adult life, and most of my childhood, too. But I’ve always let fear hold me back – fear of failing. Fear that I couldn’t really write a long-form story that stays engaging and coherent. Fear that my ideas were too trite, too cliche, too tropey. Fear that people would read my stories and hate them – read my stories and hate me. So I just never did it. This summer I had a turning point about my fears, but that’s a post for another day; this fall I decided to join thousands of other participants crazy enough to try to write the first 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days.

I spent November doing NaNoWriMo and churned out 51,638 words of the first draft of my first novel. In December added another 11,000 words and then gave my (terrible, awful, okay maybe there are a few redeeming bits) baby to three trusted beta readers. Their feedback is coming in now, and I’m working through the wisdom in The Story Grid – so I have a plan for January to be a month of rewriting and new writing.

There are still several more steps before this book sees the light of a public day. Another round of beta readers and the edits they suggest. Then querying agents, and probably getting a bunch of rejections, and maybe one acceptance. Then shopping the novel to publishers, and getting a bunch of rejections, and maybe one contract offer. And then – if all the stars align – you’ll be able to find my book at your favorite bookstore or online retailer.

2015 was a complete blogging dead zone, and for a long time I wasn’t ready to talk about why.

For anyone new who stumbles across this blog and wonders, I’ll go way back to explain. In January 2012, my mom passed away. She’d been battling ovarian cancer for about eighteen months; it had progressed into her brain and spinal fluid, and she took her last breath peacefully at home with my dad and his mother and sister around her. I was in Kentucky, wishing I could be there, feeling torn about taking care of my little family and taking care of the family I grew up in. That’s a hard place to be, and reader, if you’re there: I get you. Hang in there. Over the next few months, I blogged a bit (and drank a bit) and cried a lot and got through the days. You will get through it, too.

In the fall of 2014, my two oldest kids started attending private school for the first time after homeschooling for their whole lives and we bought a new house. It was crazy around here, but exhilarating and vibrant. I blogged about it.

And someone from our family’s past showed up here on my blog. An old friend of my mother’s, who missed her deeply, and who had spoken angrily and rudely to all of us when my father remarried, found my blog and left awful comments. There’s this thing called comment moderation – on the backside of the blog, I can see comments and then I can approve them to appear or I can delete them if they are spam or, in this case, abusive – so the things she said weren’t made public, but they hurt me terribly.

After that, every time I sat down to blog about something – to share something sweet or cute or funny my kids did or said, to talk about something hard or challenging I was thinking about, to encourage anyone reading – I just couldn’t. I would hear her voice in my head, rebuking and incriminating and insulting, and I would shut the internet down and walk away.
Normally I have words to spare, but that encounter robbed me of my words. So for almost all of 2015, I didn’t touch this blog. I renewed the domain, and I kept reading the words of others, but I only put my own words out on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. This place felt invaded. Violated.

Now it’s the end of the year, and when I made my goals for 2016, I realized I wanted to use this space again. I’m going to work on a little facelift, and probably streamline the archives, and –most importantly– I’m going to start writing here again.
Life is too big and my words are too important to let the haters get me down. I’ll be here with bells on in the new year – and I hope you’ll join me.

Last year, I set a goal for myself to read 24 books in 12 months. It was a bit laughable, because in my younger years I often read 24 books a month. Life with kids and teaching and homekeeping had gotten busy, and I’d let this favorite hobby suffer. At the end of the year, I was horrified to realize I had only read 10 books (other than a title here and there for ‘work’ – LLL or homeschool – I didn’t count those toward my goal). This year, I decided only to make a goal of reading MORE than last year. I decided to be more intentional about keeping good books nearby, so that when I had a down moment I could read instead of browse mindlessly on the Internet. As I write this (July 16, 2014) I’ve read 13 books, with a nice variety of fluffy fiction, deeper fiction, and nonfiction both humorous and informative. I’m getting my literary mojo back, and it feels good.

Edit: it’s now the end of October, and my list is sitting at 19 titles, with two more half-finished books to be added soon.

Edit: December 22. I just logged my twenty-fourth book. I think I actually read two or three others but forgot to write them down, but hey. Victory!

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Divergent, by Veronica RothInsurgent, by Veronica RothAllegiant, by Veronica RothPassing for Normal: A Memoir of Compulsion, by Amy S. Wilensky
Memoir about puzzle pieces, dyslexia? forgot to write down title/authorJohn Wesley: Servant of God, by John PollockBless Your Heart, You Tramp (and Other Southern Endearments), by Celia RivenbarkThe Newlyweds, by Nell FreudenbererAnimal Dreams, by Barbara KingsolverBeing Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral, by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte HaysElbows Off the Table, Napkin in the Lap, No Video Games During Dinner, by Carol McD. WallaceGod’s Harvard, A Christian College on a Mission to Save America, by Hanna RosinKentucky Houses of Stratton Hammon, by Winfrey P. Blackburn, Jr. and R Scott GillEasy to Love but Hard to Raise, by Kay Marner and Adrienne Ehlert BashistaADHD & Me, by Blake E. S. TaylorSecrets of an Organized Mom, by Barbara ReichClutterfree With Kids, by Joshua Becker
Buzz, by Katherine EllisonUnglued, by Lysa TerKeurstI’m No Angel: From Victoria’s Secret Model to Role Model, by Kylie BisuttiThe Blythes Are Quoted, by L. M. MontgomeryEleanor & Park, by Rainbow RowellGone Girl, by Gillian FlynnA Replacement Life, by Boris Fishman

This afternoon I saw something on Facebook. A proud mother posting photos of her kid’s school presentation on a historical figure – typical newsfeed fodder, right?

But this was a photo of a White middle-school kid in blackface.

I gasped and I muttered under my breath. I got angry and I prayed about holding my tongue and my temper.

And then, I decided to hold my temper but not my tongue. Because sitting silently in the face of injustice, in the presence of disrespect, in the view of racism (yup, I said it!) is no better than engaging in injustice and disrespect and racism oneself.

Of all the character traits I pray that my children will grow to embody – and that I pray they will SEE IN ME – integrity is one of the dearest to my heart. Because integrity, I believe, locks all the others together. Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, love: each of them is undergirded and strengthened by integrity.

I know and love people of color. I would be horrified for any of them to sit in a school auditorium and witness a kid parade in blackface on a stage. What’s more? I would be horrified for my White children to witness that, too. Because I don’t want my children to think that the defining characteristic of that famous freedom fighter was the color of his skin. I don’t want my community to be one where showing up to a public school wearing blackface is acceptable.

So I said something.

I don’t know if the lesson deep at the heart of this will get through to that mother or that preteen. (SPOILER ALERT: THE LESSON IS THAT BLACKFACE IS NEVER OKAY BECAUSE BLACKFACE IS ALWAYS DEEPLY DISRESPECTFUL.) I have hope, though, that they or their circle Facebook friends will see my comment and stop to think. Maybe one heart or mind will change. But even if they don’t? The other lesson deep at the heart of what happened today was for me: speaking out about Wrong is always okay because it is always the Right thing to do.

I am still thankful for restoration and health at the hands of the Great Physician. Thankful for the man Chris has become through the past thirteen years. Thankful for the three beautiful children with whom we have been blessed, and for the life we have built. Thankful for the hundreds of lives he’s touched through his work. Thankful beyond measure to the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Oh my gravy, I have unpacked one hundred boxes. My knuckles are all scraped up – why am I unable to unpack without cutting myself? Luckily, we have friends who are planning to move in about a month, so they are going to come take the empties away soon.

2. Oh my gravy, there are still so many boxes in the house! I’m getting to the standstill where I can’t unpack a couple of spaces any further until we have them painted, so my type-A inner mumblings will just have to pipe down about the fact that it’s not all DONE yet.

3. Speaking of painters, apparently autumn is their busy season because so far, every one we’ve spoken to is booked up until November. At that rate, I may just up and do it myself. {huffy sigh}

4. If you’re on Twitter, you probably saw that Chris decided last week would be a great time to have gallbladder surgery. Well fine – he didn’t really CHOOSE it, but still. He had four large gallstones, so he needed the operation, but it did set us back a little on the unpacking-and-settling-in-front.

5. I had a conversation today with Susannah’s teachers about her attention and focus. Chris has been saying for two or three years that he thought she had at attention disorder, and he may be vindictated after all… At the very least, I suspect we are going to have to get her evaulated very soon.

6. Everything in my new house ‘beeps’ and ‘boops’ and I can never remember which noise signals which appliance. I feel slightly kooky and eccentric, running around to check the fridge, dishwasher, dryer….

7. Gardens are lovely, but reaping a harvest that you didn’t even plant is somehow even lovelier. Dear Sellers, THANK YOU for planting tomatoes and zucchini. We heart you. Love, The Nebels

8. When a mama warns a daughter NOT to eat those skinny red peppers because they are spicy… the daughter may pick one anyway. And then she may slice it open with a butter knife and give it to her little sister. And then the mama may run downstairs to screams and see a crying toddler who is yelling, “HE’P ME! I AM ON FI-YAH!”

9. In case you didn’t know, milk helps soothe spicey-burned tongues. Also, be sure to super-duper-scrub any fingers which have touched jalapenos – or else you will later hear screaming again. “MAMA! HE’P! MY EYE IS ON FI-YAH!”

Welcome!

I'm writing my first novel, mothering three kids, and loving one husband. I blog because I'm too loquacious for my own good. My verbal overflow ends up here. My life story is on top and 11 years of archives are below. If you have a few words to spare, I'd love to hear from you - drop me a comment!